As environmental regulations have been strengthened throughout the world, there is a growing interest in the measurement and removal of harmful materials such as volatile organic compounds (VOCs) or materials disrupting ozone. Thus, many technologies have been developed to measure such harmful materials. Among these technologies, measurements using a surface plasmon resonance have shown to have high sensitivity and may be used in a wide range of applications.
Surface plasmon resonance has been actively used for measurements in fields such as life, medical science, environment, agriculture, and the like. Although the use the surface plasmon resonance may provide high sensitivity and may be used in a wide range of applications, this measuring technology is generally used for research and diagnostic applications in laboratories, settings and are not available as portable, small-sized, and/or commercial sensors. This is because the optical elements, such as a light source, a light measurer, an optical filter, a lens, a mirror, and the like, which are typically required to generate and measure a surface plasmon resonance, are generally difficult to integrate and/or to make in small sizes. For example, because a conventional surface plasmon resonance sensor uses optical parts, such as a light emitting diode (LED), an optical filter, and a photodiode array, which are difficult to be integrated using a single process, the conventional surface plasmon resonance sensors are consequently of the size and/or the cost that may not be generally suitable for common use in portable or consumer products, such as consumer electronics devices, office equipments, automobiles, or the like.